Hank Quotes

because nerds like us are allowed to be unironically enthusiastic about stuff. Nerds are allowed to love stuff, like jump-up-and-down-in-the-chair-can’t-control-yourself love it. Hank, when people call people nerds, mostly what they’re saying is ‘you like stuff.’ Which is just not a good insult at all. Like, ‘you are too enthusiastic about the miracle of human consciousness’.

He inclined his head at my dress. "What's the occasion?" "Homecoming," I said, twirling. "Like?" "Last I heard, Homecoming requires a date." "About that," I hedged. "I'm sort of...going with Scott. We both figure a high-school dance is the last place Hank will be patrolling." Patch smiled, but it was tight. "I take that back. If Hank wants to shoot Scott, he has my blessing.

Behold the field in which I grow my fucks. Lay thine eyes upon it and see that it is barren.

You're staying here, Angel." "You're taking this one alone?" "First, Hank can't see us together. Second, I don't like the idea of dragging you into something that could get messy fast. If you need one more reason, I love you.

It's no wonder we're all such a mess, is it? We're like Tom Hanks in Big. Little boys and girls trapped in adult bodies and forced to get on with it.

I missed you, Angel. Not one day went by that I didn't feel you missing from my life. You haunted me to the point that I began to believe Hank had gone back on his oath and killed you. I couldn't escape you and I didn't want to. You tortured me, but it was better than losing you.

Humanity is good. Some people are terrible and broken, but humanity is good. I believe that.

Being silly is still allowed, not excluded by adulthood. What's excluded by adulthood is thoughtlessness, so be thoughtful and silly

Jesus Christ," he muttered to the ceiling. "All those times I sat in the office and laughed my ass off at stories of Lee, Eddie, Hank and Vance. They should have fuckin' medals.

You will always struggle with not feeling productive until you accept that your own joy can be something you produce. It is not the only thing you will make, nor should it be, but it is something valuable and beautiful.

In the contemporary world where things fall apart, and the centre cannot hold, you have to imagine a community where there is no centre. Hank, at the end of this year I started thinking that a lot of life is about doing things that don’t suck with people who don’t suck.

I like you in my bed,” Patch said. “I rarely pull down the covers. I rarely sleep. I could get used to this picture.” “Are you offering me a permanent place?” “Already put a spare key in your pocket.” I patted my pocket. Sure enough, something small and hard was snug inside. “How charitable of you.” “I’m not feeling very charitable now,” he said, holding my eyes, his voice deepening with a gravelly edge. “I missed you, Angel. Not one day went by that I didn’t feel you missing from my life. You haunted me to the point that I began to believe Hank had gone back on his oath and killed you. I saw your ghost in everything. I couldn’t escape you and I didn’t want to. You tortured me, but it was better than losing you.

You are always a little bit wrong

I take that back. If Hank wants to shoot Scott, he has my blessing.

I had a very happy childhood; I just wasn’t a very happy child.

its no surprise to me that anyone hardly tells the truth about how they feel. The smart ones keep to themselves for good reason. Why would you want to tell anyone anything that's dear to you? Even when you like them and want nothing more than to be closer to them? It's so painful to be next to someone you feel so strongly about and know you can't say the things you want to.

Read books. Care about things. Get excited. Try not to be too down on youself. Enjoy the ever present game of knowing.

Even on this most terrible days, even when the worst of us are all we can think of, I am proud to be a human.

The most impactful thing you can do with power is almost always to give it away.

We are all differently broken, semi-functional, rusted out love machines

I turned my face up to his. I could hardly look at him the same way. I was crying without realizing I'd started. "You made a deal with Hank. You saved my life. Why would you do that for me?" "Angel," he murmured, clasping my face between his hands. "I don't think you understand the lengths I would go to if it means keeping you here with me.

I had to lull Mom and Hank into believing I was in the right frame of mind to be taken into public. If I exited my bedroom foaming at the mouth and dressed in black LOVE SUCKS tee, my plan would never get off the ground.

I pulled out my cell, flipped it opened and said Hank’s name into the phone. It rang twice. “You okay?” he asked in greeting. “My life began when I met you,” I told him. There was a beat of silence. Then, I heard him say, “Sunshine –

Just because someone has power over you doesn’t mean they’re going to use it to hurt you. People who believe that tend to either be: People who have been victims of that sort of behavior, or . . . People who, if given power, will use it to hurt you.

Fuck being a good sport, I’d rather be playing charades with Tom Hanks.

It turns out, somehow, there are a tremendous number of things to be optimistic about.

She said one thing and I said another and the next thing I knew I wanted to spend the rest of my life in the middle of that conversation.

You can only do so much pretending before you become the thing you're pretending to be.

Just because you can't imagine something doesn't mean you can't do it.

The power that each of us has over complete strangers to make them feel terrible and and frightened and weak is amazing.

You know why love stories have happy endings?” I shake my head. “Because they end too early,” she continues. “They always end right at the kiss. You never have to see all the bullshit that comes later. You know, Life.

A morning of awkwardness is far better then a night of loneliness

It took me seventeen years to get three thousand hits in baseball. It took one afternoon on the golf course.

As Alaska zipped through something obvious about linear equations, stoner/baller Hank Walsten said, "Wait, wait. I don't get it." "That's because you have eight functioning brain cells." "Studies show that Marijuana is better for your health than those cigarettes," Hank said. Alaska swallowed a mouthful of fries, took a drag on her cigarette, and blew a smoke at Hank. "I may die young," she said. "But at least I'll die smart. Now, back to tangents.

Think of people as people, not problems that need to be solved.

You are a story that you tell yourself, and even if it is not always accurate, it is who you are, and that is very important to you.

The desert, when the sun comes up...I couldn't tell where heaven stopped and the Earth began.

It's important to remember that we all change each other's minds all the time. Any good story is a mind-altering substance.

When it comes to emotions, women know how to paint with the full set of oils, while men are busy doodling with crayons.

Hank, when people call people nerds mostly what they're saying is,'You like stuff'.

I live in the present due to the constraints of the time-space continuum.

I missed you, Angel. Not one day went by that I didn't feel you missing from my life. You haunted me to the point that I began to believe Hank had gone back on his oath and killed you. I saw your ghost in everything. I couldn't escape you and I didn't want to. You tortured me, but it was better than losing you.

What is reality except for the things that people universally experience the same way?

John Green is a very handsome, intelligent, and wise man. He smells really weird though.

But what man does out of despair, is not necessarily a key to his character. I have always thought that the real key is in that which he seeks for his enjoyment.

The person that I want to have everything to do with, wants nothing to do with me.

So now I know what I have to do. I have to keep breathing. And tomorrow the sun will rise, and who knows what the tide will bring in.

Never give up because you never know what the tide will bring in the next day.

Knowing something is a bad idea does not always decrease the odds that you will do it.

... I called my brother, Hank, and told him I was feeling frightened. Hank is the levelheaded one, the sane one, the calm one. He always has been. We have never let the fact of my being older get in the way of Hank being the wise older brother.

People will just share the things that confirm their ideology, and those things will always exist. Our reality isn't about what's real, it's about what we pay attention to.

You're radically collaborative, profoundly empathetic, and deeply communal. Everyone who tells you anything different is selling the fear that is the only thing that can break that nature.

What do I have to do to convince you that I'm only using Dabria for one reason, one only reason: Destroy Hank, bit by bit if is necessary,and make him pay for all the things he has done to harm the girl I love?

I want you, Hank. I'm much more of an animal than you think. I wanted you from the first moment I saw you - and the only thing I'm ashamed of is that I did not know it. I did not know why, for two years, the brightest moments I found were the ones in your office, where I could lift my head to look up at you. I did not know the nature of what I felt in your presence, nor the reason. I know it now. That is all I want, Hank. I want you in my bed - and you are free of me for all the rest of your time. There's nothing you'll have to pretend - don't think of me, don't feel; don't care - I do not want your mind, your will, your being or your soul, so long as it's to me you will come for that lowest one of your desires. I am an animal who wants nothing but the sensation of pleasure which you despise - but I want it from you. You'd give up amy height of virtue for it , while I - I haven't any to give up. There's none I seek or wish to reach. I am so low that I would exchange the greatest sight of beauty in the world for the sight of your figure in the cab of a railroad engine. Amd seeing it, I would not be able to see it indifferently. You don't have to fear that you're now dependent on me. It's I who will depend on any whim of yours. You'll have me anytime you wish, anywhere, on any terms. Did you call it the obscenity of my talent? It's such that it gives you a safer hold on me than on any other property you own. You may dispose of me as you please - I'm not afraid to admit it - I have nothing to protect from you and nothing to reserve. You think that this is a threat to your achievement, but it is not to mine. I will sit at my desk, and work, and when the things around me get hard to bear, I will think that for my reward I will be in your bed that night. Did you call it depravity? I am much more depraved than you are: you hold it as your guilt, and I - as my pride. I'm more proud of it than anything I've done, more proud than of building the Line. If I'm asked to name my proudest attainment, I will say: I have slept with Hank Rearden. I had earned it.

It's supposed to be hard. If it were easy, everyone would do it.

You learn more from getting your butt kicked than getting it kissed.

As is often the case, it was the easier choice to make and the more difficult choice to live with.

People who "don't consider race or gender" sure seem to end up hiring almost all white guys, almost as if they're absolutely considering race and gender.

GUESS WHERE I AM. CLUE? she texted back SWEAR U WON'T TELL A SOUL? U HAVE 2 ASK? I reluctantly texted,@ DINNER W. MARCIE'S DAD. #?@#$?!& MY MOM IS DATING HIM. TRAITOR! IF THEY GET MARRIED, U & MARCIE... COULD USE A LITTLE CONSOLATION HERE! DOES HE KNOW UR TEXTING ME? Vee asked . NO. THEY R INSIDE. I'M IN THE PARKING LOT ----COOPERSMITHS. THE PIMP. 2 GOOD 4 APPLEBEE'S, I SEE. I'M GOING 2 ORDER THE MOST EXPENSIVE THINGS ON THE MENU. IF ALL GOES WELL,HIM GOING TO THROW HANK'S DRINK IN HIS FACE 2.

Don’t tell me what to feel. All my fucking life, people have been telling me I do things wrong. I’m always the fucking asshole. I look around and I see everybody else is infinitely more fucked up than I am.

Belonging to me doesn’t mean I’ll make you do anything, it just means I consider you mine for as long as this lasts. It means I protect you, it means I take care of you. For another man, it might mean something different. Don’t confuse me with another man

Don't worry about looking cool. Do you because you are awesome.

I’d heard all this before, but I also knew that this line of argument worked. If you tell people that they’re being attacked for their beliefs, then suddenly they want to defend their beliefs, even if they didn’t really believe them before. It’s pretty amazing, really.

Get it in while you can. It'll all be gone soon enough.

When you’re faced with something you don’t understand, I think the most natural thing but also the least interesting thing you can be is afraid,

I've missed you,Angel. I dod not spent a day without missing you in my life. I became obsessed to the point I thought Hank had backed off of his oath and had killed you. I saw your ghost in everything. I couldn't scape from you and i din't want to. You tortured me, but it was better than losing you.

Whatever you do, don’t be another brick in the wall!

If you want to be happy, let go of your wants. If you want to be effective, harness them.

All those things that werent supposed to happen? They happened. What happens next is up to you.

How can you be so fucking beautiful and so fucking wrong?

Christ, don't go to the Haunted Houses with Ally and Indy. A few years ago, Indy went berserk and broke through the hay bales they had set up to make the haunted trail and headed into the cornfields. All the employees chased after her but since they were dressed like monsters, Indy lost her mind. They had to call the cops to settle her down." I lost him at "cornfields". "Cornfields?" I whispered. "Yeah." "They have a haunted trail through cornfields?" "Yeah, up in Thornton. Best Haunted House in Denver. Indy and Ally go every year. Why?" "Cornfields freak me out," I admitted. Hank was silent. Then, he said, "You're from Indiana. How in the fuck can cornfields freak you out?" "Cornfields don't freak me out. Cornfields at night freak me out. Haunted cornfields at night freak me out." "You been to many haunted cornfields?" "Dude," I said low. "All cornfields are haunted. Trust me. I know... They whisper to you.

It might be that saving the world is idiotically simple. Maybe we just need to connect and care for one another.

The most insidious part of fame for April wasn't that other people dehumanized her; it was that she dehumanized herself. She came to see herself not as a person but as a tool.

It turns out pundits don’t want to talk about what’s happened; they want to use what’s happened to talk about the same things they talk about every day.

Then I said, “Matt’s got a big mouth.” “They all got big mouths, girl, learn that quick. These boys talk more than a pack of women. I lost fifty bucks on you.” I was stunned speechless again, this time it didn’t last as long. “What?” “See, Lee nailed Indy the first night they were together. Not nailed her nailed her but she was in his bed. Eddie, with Jet, it took a few days. Hank and Roxie, like, a day. Vance, like three, but Jules was a virgin and he had to interrupt the festivities once to go out and shoot someone.” I was blinking rapidly and feeling kind of faint at the amount and sensitivity of information Shirleen was imparting, not to mention what it might mean to me. “So we had a pool. Everyone threw down money on when they thought Luke would nail you. Mace won five hundred dollars.” Ho-ly crap. “So,” she went on. “Did he nail you nail you or did you two just sleep?” For some reason, I answered her unbelievably nosy question. “We just slept.” “New pool!” she shouted.

The whole purpose of places like Starbucks is for people with no decision-making ability whatsoever to make six decisions just to buy one cup of coffee. Short, tall, light, dark, caf, decaf, low-fat, non-fat, etc. So people who don't know what the hell they're doing or who on earth they are can, for only $2.95, get not just a cup of coffee but an absolutely defining sense of self: Tall. Decaf. Cappuccino." - Joe Fox

If I asked you to do something for me, I don't suppose you'd listen?" When he had my attention, he continued, "I'm going to take you home. Try to forget tonight happened. Try to act normal, especially around Hank. Don't mention my name." By way of an answer, I shot him a black look and swung out of the Tahoe. He followed suit, coming around to my side. "What kind of answer is that?" He asked, but his voice wasn't nearly so gruff.

Life is a lot like pizza… But in fact, Hank, the fundamental thing that all critical reading does is reveal to us there are not easy definitions that distinguish us from them. Reading with an eye toward metaphor allows us to become the person we’re reading about while reading about them. That’s why there are symbols in books and why your English teacher deserves your attention. Ultimately it doesn’t matter if the author intended a symbol to be there because the job of reading is not to understand the author’s intent. The job of reading is to use stories as a way into other people as we see ourselves, and when we do that we can look out at the world and see a giant endless set of beautiful variations of pizzas; the whole world composed of billions of beautiful, delicious pizzas.

Call me a pessimist, but I think if bigotry could be solved by access to more information, it would have been solved by now. Hate isn't about lack of understanding: it's about hate.

Nothing lasts forever,' I said, flicking cigarette ash into a cut-glass tray. 'We all have a short time, to shine or just survive.

Bravery is not strength in the face of a far lesser foe. Bravery is the exact opposite of that.

What?” I asked, deciding to go with uppity. “Enjoying yourself?” Hank asked, his mouth twitching. “No,” I said angrily. “I’m dead. Now I have to run all the way back to my lifeless body and get my stuff. The orcs and trolls will be hanging around and we’ll have to fight them and I can’t do that without my good armor. I’ll have to use the crappy stuff I have stashed in my trunk. I had a really good sword and helmet and now they’re gone. That just plain sucks.” Hank stared at me. Then he said, “You do know I don’t know what the fuck you’re talkin’ about.” “Diablo,” I replied, like that explained it all.

I pop a cassette into the Buick's stereo. It's the Ramones. I turn the volume up high and roll down the windows. The highway air tastes of fumes, but it still feels goddamn good to breathe

The solution is, everywhere and always, the decentralization and redistribution of all forms of power.

I don't think any of us are blameless when we all, more and more often, see ourselves not as members of a culture but as weapons in a war.

I don’t just say shit. I mean, I do talk a lot of shit, but I generally mean what I say and I say what I mean.

We are each individual, but the far greater thing is what we are together, and if that isn't protected and cherished, we are headed to a bad place.

people seem to be getting dumber and dumber. You know, I mean we have all this amazing technology and yet computers have turned into basically four figure wank machines. The internet was supposed to set us free, democratize us, but all it's really given us is Howard Dean's aborted candidacy and 24 hour a day access to kiddie porn. People... they don't write anymore, they blog. Instead of talking, they text, no punctuation, no grammar: LOL this and LMFAO that. You know, it just seems to me it's just a bunch of stupid people pseudo-communicating with a bunch of other stupid people at a proto-language that resembles more what cavemen used to speak than the King's English.

Next time you have a bad day, remember that it is amazing that you are alive at all, much less a member of a self-aware species living at the height of human technological progress.

Their voice came out of the watch, slow and then all at once, like ketchup.

I don’t think that’s it. I think everybody’s got that special someone that gets under their skin and doesn’t go away. I think maybe you have that particular fungal property for him.

I’ve lost a lot of battles, but I’ve never lost sight of the war. My goal is to fight my way to a day when we’re old and gray and she looks at me and says ‘I’m glad you never gave up.’ Until then, I fight. No retreat, baby. No surrender.

Basically, do your best to mock and deride their connection to and appreciation of you because, deep down, you dislike yourself enough that you cannot imagine anyone worthwhile actually wanting to be with you. I mean, if they like you, there must be something wrong with them, right?

Good morning, Hell-A. In the land of the lotus-eaters, time plays tricks on you. One day you’re dreaming, the next, your dream has become your reality. It was the best of times. If only someone had told me. Mistakes were made, hearts were broken, harsh lessons learned. My family goes on without me, while I drown in a sea of pointless pussy. I don’t know how I got here. But here I am, rotting away in the warm California sun. There are things I need to figure out, for her sake, at least. The clock is ticking. The gap is widening. She won’t always love me “no matter what

Country music was the most segregated kind of music in America, where even whites played jazz and even blacks sang in the opera. Something like country music was what lynch mobs must have enjoyed while stringing up their black victims. Country music was not necessarily lynching music, but no other music could be imagined as lynching’s accompaniment. Beethoven’s Ninth was the opus for Nazis, concentration camp commanders, and possibly President Truman as he contemplated atomizing Hiroshima, classical music the refined score for the high-minded extermination of brutish hordes. Country music was set to the more humble beat of the red-blooded, bloodthirsty American heartland. It was for fear of being beaten to this beat that black soldiers avoided the Saigon bars where their white comrades kept the jukeboxes humming with Hank Williams and his kind, sonic signposts that said, in essence, No Niggers.

At LeakyCon, a young lady asked me how I dealt with bullying. I wasn’t able to give her a very good answer, which troubles me. Well, there were lots of shouts of “It gets better” and “Stay strong” and “We love you”. But when I put myself back in time to when I was being bullied, none of those things would’ve helped me. Yes, absolutely it does get better. But when you are being physically and psychologically tortured, it is difficult to remove yourself from the pressingness of the moment at hand. Here’s how I dealt with bullying: I cried, I hated myself, I hated my life. I didn’t deal with it, I survived it, but I never dealt with it. So here are two tips from someone with lots of experience. 1: It’s not about you, it has nothing to do with you, it’s about the assholes doing it to you. 2: Your job is not to deal with it, your job is to survive it, which you CAN do because it WILL end. And then yes, it will get better.

The office Halloween party was at the Royalton last week and I went as a mass murderer, complete with a sign painted on my back that read MASS MURDERER (which was decidedly lighter than the sandwich board I had constructed earlier that day that read DRILLER KILLER), and beneath those two words I had written in blood Yep, that's me and the suit was also covered with blood, some of it fake, most of it real. In one fist I clenched a hank of Victoria Bell's hair, and pinned next to my boutonniere (a small white rose) was a finger bone I'd boiled the flesh off of. As elaborate as my costume was, Craig McDermott still managed to win first place in the competition. He came as Ivan Boesky, which I thought was unfair since a lot of people thought I'd gone as Michael Milken last year. The Patty Winters Show this morning was about Home Abortion Kits.

I follow and cultivate my own curiosity. I think curiosity is one of the top two or three human characteristics. It's something that I really like about myself. [...] I want to understand stuff! I want to understand people! Following my curiosity so frequently leads me to better life decisions and better business decisions but also - just feeling better! You're never going to feel bad about your whole life if you loved people and you were curious. I mean, that's kind of all I want!

Maya was the most effective talker I knew. It was like she wrote essays in her brain and then recited them verbatim. She once explained to me that she thought this was part of being Black in America. “Every black person who spends time with a lot of white people eventually ends up being asked to speak for every black person,” she told me one night after it was too late to still be talking, “and I hate that. It’s really stupid. And everyone gets to respond to that idiocy however they want. But my anxiety eventually made me extremely careful about everything I said, because of course I don’t represent capital-B Black People, but if people think I do, then I still feel a responsibility to try to do it well.

Dear Karen, I've been thinking about Us, the story of us. How the fuck do I sum it up? Has it been perfect? Hardly. Any story with me at the center of it will never be anything less than a big smiling mess. But here's what I know for sure—our time in the sun has been a thing of absolute fucking beauty. The nightmares, the hangovers, the fucking and the punching. The gorgeous shimmering insanity of the city of ours. Where for years I woke up, fucked up, said I was sorry, passed out and did it all over again. As a writer, I'm a sucker for happy endings. The guy gets the girl, she saves him from himself, fade to fucking black. As a guy who loves a girl, I realize there's no such thing. There's no sunset. There's just now, and there's just the two of us, which can be scary fucking ugly sometimes. But if you close your eyes and listen for the whisper of your heart—if you simply keep trying and never ever give up, no matter how many times you get it wrong, until the beginning and the end blur into something called until we meet again -- and that's it. I didn't know how to finish it, because it's not over. It'll never be over, as longs as there's you, and there's me, and there's hope, and grace.